1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to solid state storage systems and methods for controlling solid state storage systems, and more particularly, to a solid state storage system for flexibly controlling reserved areas and related method thereof.
2. Related Art
Nonvolatile memories are widely used as storage of various portable information terminals. Recently, SSDs (solid state drives) using NAND flash memory have begun to replace HDDs (hard disk drives) used for PCs (personal computers). It is anticipated that the SSD will make further inroads into the HDD market.
One of the problems occurring in using an SSD is a failed block problem. The failed block may be caused by processing defects of a flash memory or degradation of memory cells from frequent operations. The failed block needs to be replaced with a block in a reserved area so that the physical area of the failed block is not referenced again. To this end, a reserved area space is allocated. That is to say, a separate physical area is allocated and used solely for replacing a failed block.